South
Rescue, recovery efforts continue in North Carolina as Helene's death toll exceeds 240 in Southeast
North Carolina continues its recovery from the devastation left by Hurricane Helene. Over 130,000 residents remain without power, facing the daunting task of cleaning up debris and rebuilding their lives. FOX Weather Correspondent Brandy Campbell is in Swannanoa, North Carolina, providing updates on the ongoing recovery efforts.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Recovery and resilience continue in the Southeast following Hurricane Helene after the historic storm killed at least 248 people with hundreds more still unaccounted for from the deadliest mainland U.S. hurricane since Katrina.
Communities are still reeling along Florida’s Big Bend, which took the brunt of Helene’s eye wall and storm surge, and in southern Georgia, where Helene’s hurricane-force winds caused widespread property damage.
But it’s the widespread devastation of the mountainous communities of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee where the scope of the catastrophe continues to slowly come into focus.
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Debris and damage remain strewn across entire cities as multiple rivers fed by 15-30 inches of rain swelled to well beyond record flood heights, sending torrents of water feet deep raging through streets and neighborhoods. It left behind unfathomable scenes of destruction – a mix of buildings, cars, trees, power lines and whatever else Helene’s torrential rains could sweep away.
As some survivors in North Carolina return home for the first time since Helene’s flood, they are confronted with a heartbreaking reality. The scenes of destruction are almost beyond comprehension. FOX Weather Meteorologist Jane Minar is live from Cove Creek with the latest update.
Now, with rivers receded, faded water lines along the tops of homes and buildings mark the staggering heights floodwaters reached, and mountains of mud and debris leave a residual reminder of how neighborhoods became temporary river beds.
Amid the heartache of immense loss, communities across the hard-hit area face a dual challenge of cleaning up the mess and rebuilding neighborhoods, roads and critical power and water infrastructure. Rescue crews, engineers, linemen, doctors, nurses and relief workers are pouring in from across the country.
As more areas are searched for the first time, the death toll is expected to rise. The lack of phone service and electricity in the region hampers efforts to locate missing individuals.
Asheville, North Carolina Police Deputy Chief Sean Aardema said Friday his agency is still investigating 75 active missing persons cases. Their agency found and rescued three survivors who had been trapped in rubble all week and got them to medical treatment — two who were trapped in debris inside the Swannanoa River and another person who had been trapped in their home.
HOW YOU CAN HELP HURRICANE HELENE RELIEF EFFORTS
As of Thursday, Buncombe County in western North Carolina reported 200 still unaccounted for.
Many in the region are still required to boil water as water mains remain damaged and wells contaminated by dirty floodwaters. An initial study by CoreLogic estimates damage costs have already reached $30.5 billion to $47.5 billion.
Over half a million people across the Southeast still remain without power more than a week after Helene struck. Duke Energy says while 1.2 million power outages have been repaired so far in North Carolina, about 170,000 still remain in the western mountainous region.
The company says about 105,000 will be long-term outages due to destroyed infrastructure. A 200,000 pound mobile substation has been brought to Biltmore Village, as their main substation was covered by water and will need 3-4 months to repair.
Hospitals across the U.S. were bracing for potential shortages of IV fluids and dialysis solutions after major supplier Baxter International’s medical plant suffered significant damage in Marion, North Carolina.
‘My grief today is unfathomable’
As the death toll climbs, communities are reeling for who they’ve lost among the destruction.
Kim Ashby, a 58-year-old seventh-grade teacher, is among the hundreds still unaccounted for in western North Carolina after her home was swept away by raging floodwaters.
58-year-old Kim Ashby is among the hundreds unaccounted for after she was swept away during Hurricane Helene’s floods in North Carolina.
She was with her husband in Elk Park when the nearby river swelled to engulf the home. As they tried to get out, debris struck the home, pulling it into the river and taking the Ashbys with it. Rod tried to hold onto Kim, but he lost his grip, and she was swept away, family members said.
“She’s just a happy, loving soul,” Meidinger said. “She’s known as Mama Kim to a lot of people, not just to her children. So she’s an incredibly vibrant individual that just spreads joy.”
In Asheville, Meghan Dry lost her 7-year-old son and both parents when they had to scramble to their roof to escape the floods, only to have the home break apart.
Three members of a North Carolina family, including a 7-year-old boy, died in the disastrous flooding from Helene. Now, the survivors share their story of immense grief and comforting faith.
“My son called out to the one God Almighty. And I think at that moment he was rescued, and he became my hero, and I think all of them carried me through that moment,” Drye said. “My grief today is unfathomable. I’m sorrowful. I feel broken.”
In Erwin, Tennessee, employees and family members are mourning the loss of several workers at Impact Plastics, who were swept away trying to escape the raging Nolichucky River through town.
One of the presumed dead is Rosy Reynoso, a 29-year-old devoted wife and mother of two.
“At one point, she called her husband and said, ‘This is bad. I don’t think I’m going to make it. Can you tell our kids how much I love them and take care of them?” Annabel Andrade said as she held back her tears.
‘I knew there was nobody else coming’
For the survivors, many had harrowing tales of escaping the rushing waters.
John Zara and his family had to scramble to the roof of their home in Swannanoa as the river reached well beyond record levels.
“Within an hour or less the water went from street level to inside my house to up to my chest,” Zara said. Neighbor John Arndt and another came with kayaks to pluck Zara, his wife and two young kids off the roof, but the rescues weren’t done.
“Folks started to hear some noise over there (next door homes) and realized they were trapped in their attic,” Zara said. Two men who lived nearby made it over with an ax and cut the roofs open, rescuing two families and their dogs trapped inside their attics.
“There were sheds floating down (the street),” Arndt said. “We had to dodge tires, cars, washing machines, anything you could think of. It was just surreal. It was it was crazy.”
The shocking moment a camper van was carried over a waterfall in Fries, Virginia, was caught on camera last week. The camper goes over the waterfall and is not seen again before the video ends.
But they all made it to safety.
“There’s not enough thanks and graciousness in the world I can bestow upon them,” Zara said. “We owe our lives, my family’s lives and those other family’s lives to those two gentlemen that were able to get a kayak down to us…. I knew there was nobody else coming.”
But there were stories of perseverance as well.
A South Carolina man walked 17 miles through Helene’s destruction to still make it to his daughter’s wedding.
When a South Carolina father realized he might miss his daughter’s wedding due to impassable roads from Helene, he made a remarkable decision to walk 17 miles to be there. David Jones joins FOX Weather to share his journey through miles of debris to witness his daughter walk down the aisle.
(Stellar Photography)
In hard-hit Asheville, volunteers and staff at an animal shelter managed to save over 100 pets by scrambling to get them out of harm’s way before flooding devastated the town.
“When I went there, and I saw everything underwater, it was just devastating,” said Leah Craig Chumbley of Brother Wolf Animal Rescue. “And also, my gosh, thank God we got them out … If we hadn’t done that, all of them would have perished in that building.”
East Tennessee native and country music star Dolly Parton announced Friday she would donate $1 million as part of a $10 million donation partnership with Walmart.
“These are my mountains, these are my valleys, there are my rivers flowing like a stream,” Parton said. “These are my people, these mountain-colored rainbows. These are my people, and this is my home.”
Federal, state and local aid continues to pour into the region as communities slowly work to get back on their feet.
It seems like a match made in urban planning heaven. Most metro areas have an abundance of underperforming retail property, such as half-vacant shopping centers, and a shortage of housing that average Texans can afford. Turn that retail into housing, and voila, two problems solved at once.
But no complicated problem has such an easy fix. The North Texas growth juggernaut means that burgeoning exurbs need additional retail space even as dilapidated strip centers plague core cities and older suburbs. Some homeowners may fear and fight plans for new, higher-density housing near them, even when it replaces obsolete shopping centers.
Yet reinvigorating or repurposing underused commercial property can improve a neighborhood’s quality of life while also adding value to a city’s property tax base. That new revenue is especially important because state lawmakers have been keen to limit homeowners’ property taxes. Responsible city leaders need to grow other parts of the tax base just to keep up with the increasing cost of providing public services and maintaining aging infrastructure.
What North Texas needs is a variety of tactics to address these related issues: streamlined rezoning, public incentives to redevelop infrastructure, increased public education about budget issues, and a greater tolerance for change. Fading retail centers can be revitalized in ways that preserve their original use or transform them into something totally different, such as housing. It just takes determination, money and imagination.
Retail abundance
Dallas-Fort Worth has about 200 million square feet of retail space, and it’s about 95% to 97% occupied, said Steve Zimmerman, managing director of the brokerage group at The Retail Connection. Colliers, a real estate services and investment management firm, reported in August that retail rents here have been rising about 4% annually. Those statistics suggest that retail space isn’t severely overbuilt.
But not all retail centers are full of high-performing, high-value businesses. Aging strip centers tend to attract vape shops, nail salons, pay-day lenders, check-cashers, doughnut shops and vacancies; their capacious parking lots remain mostly empty. Those underutilized properties don’t enhance nearby neighborhoods or the tax base as much as busy, attractive retail centers would.
Last year, the Texas Legislature created a new tool to help redevelop commercial properties. Known as Senate Bill 840, the law forces large cities in urban counties to allow multifamily and mixed-use residential development on commercial, office, warehouse or retail property without a zoning change.
SB 840 is meant to encourage developers to transform bleak, underperforming retail spaces into badly needed housing. For example, it might have prevented the fight over Pepper Square in Far North Dallas.
That shopping center languished while the developer and nearby residents sparred in a bitter and protracted rezoning dispute. It is a prime example of how local government processes and NIMBYism make it hard to redevelop in Dallas.
But implementing the new law has been more complicated than we’d hoped. For starters, some North Texas suburbs reworked their zoning code to try to sidestep the new rules.
Irving, for example, set an eight-story minimum height requirement for new multifamily or mixed-use residential development — much taller than what’s typical in the area. Frisco pulled a different trick. Senate Bill 840 exempts industrial areas, so Frisco changed its zoning code to permit heavy industry in commercial zones.
Market conditions also may be slowing commercial-to-residential redevelopment. Our newsroom colleague, Nick Wooten, reported in November that there is a temporary over-supply of apartments in Dallas, fueled by a construction boom and a stream of remote workers in the post-COVID years.
(Unfortunately, that oversupply hasn’t made rent much cheaper. Even if a lease is relatively inexpensive, there are plenty of added costs, like electricity and Wi-Fi. Plus, building managers often nickel-and-dime residents with mandatory fees for trash collection, parking lot security gates, parcel lockers, pets and on and on.)
The temporary situation doesn’t erase the region’s long-term shortage of lower-cost homes. We need SB 840 to work because we need a larger, more diverse stock of housing, including multifamily and townhomes, across the entire region. With a more generous supply of all types of homes, both rental and owned, housing costs should eventually decline.
More options for faded retail
Senate Bill 840 is only one strategy for remaking forlorn retail properties into something more useful and valuable. Some creative owners, managers and public officials have found ways to maintain a property’s retail orientation while adding unique experiences and features.
Carrollton updated design standards and established a “Retail Rehabilitation Performance Grant Program” to encourage property owners to reinvest in underutilized retail centers. One notable success: Carrollton Town Center, where occupancy had dipped to 20% more than a decade ago, according to a story in PM Magazine. Now it is a bustling, walkable, Asian-focused retail and restaurant destination.
Hillcrest Village in Far North Dallas is part of an entire block of aging retail along Arapaho Road. A public-private partnership transformed a parking lot into the “Hillcrest Village Green,” a 1.5-acre expanse of turf with a playground at one end. Restaurants with oversize patios overlook the city-owned greenspace.
Local developer Monte Anderson, a champion of “incremental redevelopment,” is remaking the Wheatland Plaza shopping center in Duncanville. He’s reworking interior spaces and reclaiming some of the parking lot for food trucks, new landscaping, and eventually, a dozen for-sale townhomes built with Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity.
Cities can speed retail redevelopment with small and large incentive programs. Retail properties typically don’t have the utility infrastructure needed for housing; grants and revolving, low-interest loan funds can help residential developers keep costs down so their end product is more affordable. Elected officials need to help constituents understand why most cities need denser, higher-value redevelopment to keep tax rates lower.
D-FW has matured into a metropolis with a vibrant, diversified economy. To accommodate population growth, cities can’t ignore languishing commercial property, or allow only one type of new housing, or permit property tax bases to stagnate. By tackling all three issues at once, they can lay the foundation for a more prosperous future.
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Well the NBP posted players all seem to be settled now, with Imai and Okamoto having signed with an MLB club and Takahashi returning to the NBP. Those players do not seem to have sparked movement in the overall market, either in free agency or in trades, at least so far, as this offseason continues to be glacial. Hopefully things pick up a bit as we get more separation from the holidays. The Braves still seem to be motivated to make a big addition, but this front office has shown that the right deal has to be there for them to pull the trigger.
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